[Novelette, lead story in ANALOG, April 1996]

Copyright (c) 1996 by Paul Levinson

All rights reserved

THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE CASE

by Paul Levinson

The gust caught my umbrella the second I got out of my car,

before I'd even had a chance to fully open the thing. I

struggled for a bit, then gave in to the inevitable. Another

insideout dripping mess to deposit in the trashcan. The wild

force of nature wins again.

I turned my collar to the cold rain and hustled up the

brownstone stairs. I pulled out my ID and showed it to the

uniform.

"Down the hall, one flight up, second door on the right.

They're waiting for you, Dr. D'Amato."

"Right," I said. I hated these long brownstone stairs --

rushing up them always made me breathless these days. I guess I

could've walked up slowly, but that wasn't my way.

"Phil," that was Dave Spencer, even less hair and more

belly than I, bent over a body, male, looked to be in his late

20s. "Come take a look at this." Dave was the coroner. He

often called me in for special consultations -- came with my

forensic territory.

I looked. The corpse had his eyes wide open, like he'd

been shocked to death. But there were no electricity burns on

the body that I could see, and in fact the nearest electrical

outlet was some 15 feet away next to a computer on the other

side of the room.

"Chemical, food allergy, lethal injection?" I rattled off

the usual suspects in cases like this. And of course there was

the unstated omnipresent social tetrad of choices: death by

natural causes, accident, suicide, or murder.

"Not likely," Dave shook his head. "No obvious puncture

marks. No discoloration of the lips. We'll know more after the

full test course."

"So what's your best guess?" I asked.

"I have none," Dave said. "That's why I asked you in.

It's like something reached in and turned up the juice in this

guy's nervous system. Turned up the volume to lethal levels.

Looks like heart attack and ten other things gone wrong here --

never seen anything like it."

"All right," I said. "I'll have a look around." For some

reason, I had a reputation in the Department as the forensic

scientist to call in when something inexplicable seemed to have

happened. Well, I knew the reason -- I'd been involved in my

fair share of weirdo cases in my time, some of them public. And

my popular writings in fields ranging from physics to genetics

were pretty well known. "This guy have a name?"

"Glen Chaleff," Dave replied. "Some kind of computer

programmer."

Chaleff's apartment was nothing out of the ordinary. Bland

furniture arranged unsurprisingly around off-white painted

walls. The computer was the only thing that caught my eye. It

was a sophisticated machine, lean and very powerful, it seemed

to me, something well beyond the latest commercial chip. The

screen had two words on it.

"Copyright Notice"

I put on my gloves before touching the keyboard -- never

mind the standard precaution of not doing anything to disturb

possible fingerprints and evidence, I was thinking more about

not getting electrocuted on the outside chance that's what had

happened to Chaleff. I pressed the up and down arrow keys to see

if there was any other text above or below on the screen.

Nada. Just a bunch of hash above, three quarters faded to

nothing, like I had come in on the end game of some kind of

program that self-destructed after use. I arrowed back to

"Copyright Notice."

It was fading away now too.

***

Jenna Katen was the girlfriend. There's almost always a

girlfriend in these sorts of cases. Lieutenant in charge asked

me if I wanted to come in and interview her. She was the reason

Chaleff was considered a possible homicide.

"She discovered the body, she says he was working on some

kind of genetic project that seems on cloud nine to me, I

thought you might have a better chance of understanding what

she's talking about, you're a real hound for that stuff, right?"

That was the Lieutenant's briefing.

"Right." I said.

Jenna was really striking. Looked a lot better than

girlfriends of the deceased usually do, except on television.

Soft green eyes and soft brown hair falling around her

shoulders just the way I like it. Keep your mind on business,

D'Amato.

I could see she'd been crying. "You look too smart for me

to offer you a smoke," I said. "How about some caffeine?"

"Sure," she looked up.

"Hot or cold?"

"Diet soda would be nice."

I went outside and coaxed a can from the machine.

"Why don't you tell me your story from the beginning," I

said, trying to pour the soda into a cup so that it didn't fizz

over the top. Never worked. "Pretend I'm an ignoramus about

the science -- but tell me everything, and spell it out as much

as you can."

She sipped the soda and squeezed the cup. "Glen was

working on a special facet of the human genome project."

I nodded. "The one that hopes to eventually identify and

map the function of every gene -- and every protein compound --

on human chromosomes."

"That's right," she said. "Except there are actually a

whole bunch of interrelated human genome projects. And this is

a special section of a special project. Early on -- about two

years ago -- the main team discovered some odd material at the

far edge on some X chromosomes."

"On all female chromosomes?" I asked.

"No, the material has so far been seen on only about eight

percent of the X chromosomes studied."

"Ok," I said. "And what do the researchers think this odd

gene is responsible for?" I knew that that area of the X

chromosome was home to at least one interesting human gene --

the so-called gay gene, still under intense investigation.

"Well, that's part of what makes this so unusual," Jenna

said. "The material's not really a gene, and doesn't seem

responsible for any behavioral or expressive trait."

"I'm not following you," I said. This is likely where the

Lieutenant had lost comprehension.

"Well, the material's chromosomal -- it's some sort of

protein code -- but it's not really a gene. Only five percent of

the DNA in our genome actually goes into genes. The rest is

sometimes called `junk DNA,' and I guess you could say our

little corner of the genome project has been prospecting for an

unlikely fortune of information in that junkpile. You know,

more clues as to how the human genome works as a whole -- how

proteins outside of the genes themselves prime them for

operation, act as regulating enzymes, that sort of thing."

"Ok," I said. "And how did Glen fit in?"

"Well, we've -- Glen's -- been trying to, well, read the

code on that odd genetic material."

"Come again?"

"The code seems amenable to some sort of binary

transformation -- you know, a mapping that would translate the

connections inside the protein complex into a series of yes and

nos, or ons and offs. Genes themselves operate on a four-part

code -- adenine binding to thymine, cytosine to guanine.

They're nucleotide bases, you know -- A and C on one side of the

helix zipper connecting to T and G on the other. I'm sorry, I'm

getting too technical for you--"

"Not at all," I said, though I could've lived without her

reciting the specific names of the nucleotide bases. This was

basic textbook stuff for DNA fingerprinting. "Please continue."

"Well, like I was saying, the special material that Glen

was working on actually has slightly different forms of the

nucleotides that make them more like a binary than a four-part

system."

"And --," I prompted.

"And, well, the hope, the goal, was that if we could get a

reliable transformation of that genetic code, whatever it was,

into binary, then we could take that binary rendering and in

turn convert it into words on a screen."

"Read the genetic code, literally?" I asked.

"Well, again, yes and no. Not really the genetic code in

our genes proper, but this code in a tiny part of the other 95

percent of our DNA on the X chromosome," Jenna said.

"I see," I said, though I didn't yet, at least not fully.

"And Glen's death?"

"He phoned to tell me he had completed the final

translation of the code, had words up on his screen ... and when

I came over, he was dead," she started sobbing. "I think those

words killed him."

"Ok," I poured more soda in her cup. So now I knew

something: either she had killed her boyfriend, and cooked up

this story to throw us off track, or there was something

genuinely strange going on here. The coroner's extensive autopsy

had already found no demonstrable cause for the sudden massive

failure of all of Chaleff's systems that had killed him --

"looks like everything just blew at once for no apparent

reason," Dave told me -- so we knew Chaleff hadn't just died of

your common heart attack or stroke while he was doing his

research. It was something more. Like something had reached in

and turned off -- or on -- some master switch, as Dave had said

yesterday. The question was who -- and what. And the what was

not only what reached in, but what was the switch?

I could see why the Lieutenant was thinking homicide. In

cases like this -- cases involving dead young bodies -- the

cause of death was all too often murder. Barring tragedies like

AIDS, young bodies don't very often expire on their own.

Now it might shock the public to hear this, but in many

ways murder is the forensic scientist's best friend. Once the

cops get a confession of murder, however inarticulate, it points

to the facts, and we can use it, working backward, to piece

together a detailed description of the death and its

circumstances. Reverse engineering is always easier than

working from the ground up.

But truthfully, I hated confessed murder as the cause of

death, always resisted it as the explanation until impossible

to do so. Not only for the obvious moral reasons -- I'm as glad

as the next guy to find a bit less depravity in the human

species wherever I can -- but because, well, I savor the thrill

of an investigation in which I don't know the final conclusion

beforehand, in which science leads to the cause of death rather

than vice versa.

And I'd learned the hard way that some kind of nefarious

intervention, something worse than mere murder, always loomed

as a possibility when research scientists were involved. I'm

not talking about dressing up a lover's quarrel or cutthroat

professional competition with a fatal malfunction in a

laboratory like they do in the movies. I've had experience with

things much worse. The public had no idea.

But what was the agent of death here?

Words on a screen?

They made sense neither as a weapon nor a lethally

malfunctioning piece of equipment.

"You have any idea what those words were?" I asked.

She looked up at me and her eyes re-focused, as if my voice

had pulled her away from some contemplation deep and distant.

"No," she said. "The screen was blank when I arrived."

So now I knew she was probably lying about at least one

thing.

***

Some of her facts were easy to verify. Jenna had been

telling the truth about Chaleff's last call to her apartment.

And there was no sign of anyone entering Chaleff's apartment

between the time of that call, and the time Jenna arrived, about

45 minutes later, when she said she'd found Chaleff dead.

Her story about the special section of the human genome

project took more work to confirm. She'd told me the MIT Media

Lab had a piece of the research action. Nic Negroponte, head of

the Lab, was an old friend of mine. He didn't know much about

that part of the project, but put me in touch with an associate

who did.

"Ralph Hertzberg here," the voice on the phone said. "Nic

told me to expect your call."

"Great," I said. "Ok. Let me start by trying to explain to

you what I think you're working on -- what I understand and what

I don't -- and you tell me where I'm wrong."

"Shoot."

"Ok," I said. "DNA is commonly said to be a genetic

language, but that's not quite right. It's really a recipe for

the construction of other proteins into cells that have specific

properties -- heart cells, brain cells, and so forth in humans

-- cells and organs and systems that come into being during

gestation."

"That's right," Hertzberg said.

"Ok," I said. "So in fact, DNA isn't really a language at

all -- it's really an arrangement of proteins that causes other

proteins to develop in a certain way, into heart cells, etc. So

really DNA is a catalyst for the development of living

organisms. But we say as a shorthand that it's a code or a set

of instructions. Am I on the right track here?"

"Very much so."

"Good," I said. "All right, then. So tell me this: How

do we get from DNA, which isn't really a language -- or is only

a language in a metaphoric sense -- how do we get from that to

this chromosomal material which Jenna Katen says Glen Chaleff

was able to read on his screen?"

Hertzberg sighed. "Not very easily, but I'll try to

explain. First, you have to understand that there's lots of

protein material associated with chromosomes that we have no

idea what the function is. Not everything there is just genes.

In fact, most isn't. Some material we've identified as seeming

to have a catalyst function for the genes themselves -- sort of

meta-catalysts -- some seem to control timing of genetic

instruction of other proteins in ways we're just beginning to

fathom. But most of this extra genetic material is still a

mystery to us."

Right, the so-called junk DNA, I thought. "And the, uh, the

linguistic material on the eight percent of X chromosomes is,

was, in the mystery area?"

"Yes."

"Has this material been found only on human chromosomes?"

"So far, yes," Hertzberg said. "Primate chromosomes were

the first other place we looked -- chimp and ape DNA is 99

percent the same as human -- and we found nothing like it."

"Nothing that could generate words on a screen?"

"Look, let me be honest with you," Hertzberg said. "I know

what Jenna told you, but we don't even know for sure that this

binary chromosomal material can be converted into readable

words. It seems transformable into a binary code, yes, but we

have no way of really testing the accuracy of that

transformation, since we have nothing precisely of this kind to

measure it against. And we certainly don't know for sure if

that code can support actual words. What we get from that code

at first is some sort of general proto-language, strongly

resembling Indo-European in its subject-predicate structure, and

therefore recognizable as a real language to some researchers, I

guess. And assuming that to be Indo-European, or

proto-Indo-European, we can make rough translations into

English, Sanskrit, what have you. But the results are

extraordinarily speculative to say the least -- I'd say the

noise to signal ratio must be well over 40 percent in the final

translation. Though that's conjecture too -- the actual

distortion could be far more, or less, for that matter. Bottom

line: We're dealing with a hell of a lot of conjecture here.

That's why we haven't published anything about this yet. It's

still in the very early stages of research. Most of our work

is."

"All right," I said. "Let's back up a little -- I'm very

much a layman when it comes to linguistics. What made you think

in the first place that the binary transformation of chromosomal

code yielded patterns that looked like Indo-European?"

"Ah," Hertzberg said. "That was the relatively easy part.

We already have ASCII table renderings of most known human

languages, including many long extinct. ASCII and binary

configurations are readily transformable into one another. So

when we converted the binary chromosomal code to ASCII, its

similarity to primal Indo-European in ASCII was noticed right

away."

"Yet you don't sound very optimistic." I appreciated the

value of a research leader willing to pull in the reins on the

wildest fantasies of the team, though personally I preferred

someone who jumped on the lead horse and urged it to fly even

further.

Hertzberg grunted. "It's the monkeys on a typewriter typing

Shakespeare problem. Or maybe sticking a duck's feet in a can

of wet red paint, and having it walk across an empty canvas, is

a better example. Is that art? It looks like art. But we

can't accept it as art, because we know its resemblance to art

is just a coincidence. Same with the chromosome code -- the fact

that it looks like an Indo-European language doesn't mean it is.

Sometimes the reason that two words in very distant languages

look like each other is just coincidence. If I were pushed for

an assessment at this point, I'd have to say that that's what

we're dealing with here."

I on the other hand was never a big fan of coincidence. It

often was a shorthand gloss, a convenient cover, for

significant connections we didn't yet understand. "But if it

isn't?"

"Look," Hertzberg sounded like his patience was beginning

to wear. "Mapping the genome is much more drudgery than the

public imagines it to be. We make a connection here, trace a

sequence there, but discovering what each of 300 billion

nucleotides can do is a massive undertaking. So we look for

relationships, for patterns of expression in the proteins. But

even that is slow, slow work. Most of the breaks come from the

other direction -- not in studying how genes express themselves,

but in anchoring an already-known expression, like an illness or

a maybe a behavioral pattern, to a genetic combination. Like

cystic fibrosis, or depression among some of the Amish. And the

DNA outside of the genes is doubly harder to understand, because

_its_ connection to the phenotype is even more removed -- we've

got no known illnesses to tag them to."

"Right, no confessed murders to work backwards from," I

said.

"What?"

"Just thinking out loud," I said, "Tell me more about the

words on the screen. What'd they say?"

"Well, so far, Klein's the only one who's claimed to have

actually produced them on the screen. Chaleff was a good

worker, but no genius, and if you want my appraisal I'd say he

was exaggerating when he told Jenna--"

"Klein? Who's Klein?" I asked.

"Manny Klein -- Emmanuel Klein," Hertzberg replied. "He's

the one who started this special part of the genome project

rolling. He discovered the odd chromosomal material two years

ago, made the first transformations into binary, and said he

eventually got some text up on his screen."

"You don't believe him?"

"Well--"

"Never mind," I said. No point in going over that ground

again. "What did the text actually say?"

"Some kind of history lesson," Hertzberg said. "It wasn't

gibberish, but it didn't make much sense. Even had a copyright

notice at the end," Hertzberg laughed. "That's why, to be

thoroughly frank with you, I keep emphasizing that I have

serious doubts that this project will ever pan out. Seems to me

a much more likely explanation for what Manny saw on his screen

is that his computer somehow dumped some text from another file

into what he was working on. It's happened to me from time to

time -- I once found part of a very personal letter I had

written months earlier right in the middle of a grant proposal I

was about to print out and FedEx. Damn good thing I caught it

in time--"

"I can imagine," I said. "Where can I get in touch with

Klein?"

"You can't," Hertzberg said. He paused for a long second,

then spoke in a much lower tone of voice. "Look, I know what

you'll be thinking when I tell you this. But believe me, the

stroke was entirely natural -- Manny had a long history of them.

And the one he got after discovering this chromosome material

was, well, very big. He was out like a light. Seventy-one is

too young to die these days, but at least he had a satisfying

life."

Hertzberg was right about what I was thinking. A death of

one young scientist and I guess I had to go with the Lieutenant:

it was most likely murder. The death of two scientists, both

working on the same project: jeez, I'd been down twisted paths

like that before.

Prospects for Jenna Katen suddenly were looking up.

I couldn't say the same for the rest of the world.

"All right. Who can I speak to for more information about

Klein?"

"Jenna's your best bet," Hertzberg answered. "She was

Manny's research assistant."

Short-lived reprieve for Jenna. The fickle scales of

probability were tipping against her again.

***

I've always found Neapolitan food to be good accompaniment

to the resolution of crises. But I wasn't there yet, not by a

long shot. I didn't know enough. I invited Jenna to lunch at

Taste of Tokyo in the Village.

I noticed more of her eyes this time. They were an

absolutely alluring species of green with flecks of violet.

Lucky would be the guy who saw to it that the DNA for those eyes

made it into the next generation. But I had more important

things to think about right now.

"Glen didn't die of old-fashioned natural causes," Jenna

said.

"We agree," I said. "Death by natural causes is a process

-- like Michael Baden says -- you see a history, however subtle,

of body breakdown that leads to the circumstances of death.

Even in heart attacks and strokes. We found no history like

that in Glen. Something else was at work there."

"Who's Michael Baden?" Jenna asked.

"Used to be Chief Medical Examiner in New York City.

Testified in the O.J. trial."

"But I didn't kill Glen," Jenna said.

"Well, that's the part that, to be straight with you, we're

not as convinced about. If Glen didn't die of natural causes --

if the breakdown of just about every major system in his body

was triggered by something _un_natural, as it almost certainly

had to have been -- then the cause of death was accident,

suicide, homicide. There are no other choices. We have no

evidence, really, that any one of those three more likely

happened than the others. But the guy is dead. You were in the

room with him. That moves the needle just a bit into the murder

part of the meter, with your shade of lipstick, as they say."

Jenna sipped her green tea. I could see her lips quivering

around the edges of the hot cup. They had no lipstick on them.

Just soft and pink. "I didn't say Glen didn't die of natural

causes," she said.

"But--"

"I said he didn't die of _old-fashioned_ natural causes,"

she said.

"Meaning?" I asked.

"I tried to tell you in your office on Tuesday," she said.

"Somehow the words on the screen killed him. The words that

came from the chromosomal material. I'm not sure how -- but

that's about as natural a cause of death as you can get -- death

by DNA, or more accurately, by transformed DNA-algorithms on a

screen."

"Is that what killed Emmanuel Klein?"

She blanched. "He wasn't a young man. Everyone says he

died of a stroke."

"What do you say?"

She took another sip of the tea, sucked down a gulp. "He

died of the same thing as Glen," she said very quietly.

"And you were there both times -- or at least working, or

involved, with both of them, right?"

She didn't answer.

"Look, you seem like an intelligent, sensitive person. I

want to help you -- I want to believe you. But you've got to be

more open with me. On the face of it, you're in a bad position

here. You have a connection with two people who died -- one

mysteriously, maybe the other mysteriously too. Cops don't like

coincidences -- they're like red flags to us. There's a common

denominator here. And I think you know it."

She got up as if to leave.

"Not a smart move," I took her hand. "Believe me, things

can get much worse for you, in a hurry." I sighed. I didn't

like badgering her, frightening her, but I had to get through to

her. "Ok, let's try a different tack. Why'd you lie to me about

not seeing anything on Glen's computer screen?"

"You saw them?" Her eyes were wide.

"Just a fading sliver. Why didn't you tell me?"

She sat down heavily, shaken. "It's personal," she said.

"Obviously -- this whole thing is personal. But--"

"No, I mean the words were personal," she said. "I should

have told you. I'm sorry. But it was too painful. To think

that I-- I just couldn't deal with it anymore on Tuesday. I just

wanted to leave. I should have told you."

What was she talking about? A Dear John letter on the

screen? That's what she thinks killed Glen Chaleff?

"The chromosomal material that Manny and Glen were working

on came from me, from my body. My words killed them. My body's

the goddamned murder weapon."

***

The sushi and tempura arrived. I looked at Jenna a long

time. "So you're saying you're a -- what? -- a carrier of some

type of genetic code that when transformed into words kills

anyone who happens to read it?"

She nodded. "So far I'm the only one -- as far as I know.

The strange DNA material has been found on eight percent of the

X chromosomes we've examined. I told you that. But so far

mine's the only one that's been translated all the way into

English words."

"How'd you get involved in this to begin with?"

"Manny -- Professor Klein -- first came across the special

DNA in a graduate student at MIT. Standard procedure -- lots of

students give DNA samples for this kind of research. I'd

already given some of mine out at CalTech. Manny put out a

request on the Internet -- hundreds of scientists around the

world were on his list, each already had DNA samples from

hundreds of students and locals. Mine came up positive -- the

special DNA is easy to spot once you know what you're looking

for. I wanted an excuse to come back East. I got in touch with

Manny and asked if I could join his team. He said sure. He was

that kind of man. If I'd known that my DNA would kill him I'd

have taken every bit of it back and grabbed the next plane to

Antarctica. But even after he died I wasn't sure. I mean,

people get strokes. But now it's happened again. This -- this

_insanity_ in my DNA has killed two fine people!" She slammed

her fist on the table. The tea in the cups shimmered, along

with the tears brimming over her eyes.

I put what I hoped would be a consoling hand on hers. "Have

you spelled this out in detail to Hertzberg? Why hasn't he

stopped the project?"

"You've talked to him, right? You know what he's like,"

Jenna said. "He's an Occam's Razor man -- he goes for the

simplest explanation. He's comfortable with thinking Manny died

of a stroke. He'd probably rather believe that I killed Glen

with a chemical that left no trace than Glen was somehow killed

by the words on the screen. He'll always pick the mundane rather

than the exotic. He's a classic example of Kuhn's workaday

scientist -- don't rock the current paradigm, milk it for all

it's worth."

Yeah, that jibed with the impression I already had of

the man. Would take a few more bodies in his face before he'd

take notice -- and by then who knows what kind of genetic

demons would be let out of the bag.

"Look, we're really talking in the dark here," I said.

"Any chance you made a copy of the, uh, offending words, so I

could see what they looked like?"

"No," she said. "They're too dangerous -- they already

killed two people, for God's sake. I don't want to take the

chance--"

"All right," I said. "I understand. But can't you at

least summarize the gist of what they say, so I can get some

idea of what it is you're talking about?"

She considered, then nodded. "First you scan the exact

chemical composition of the chromosomal material. We use a new

kind of polyacrylamide to do the electrophoresis, the imaging,

if you need to know. Gives an extremely clear image, especially

good for small nucleic molecules. And the results, as you know,

fall into a clear binary series. Then you transform that series

to an ASCII table -- and in Manny's case, in Glen's too, they

got words..."

"Right. First the Indo-European proto-language, Hertzberg

told me, then the tenuous English translation."

Jenna nodded.

"And the translation said?" I asked.

"It comes out to about three paragraphs--"

"Paragraphs?"

"Yeah," she said. "Paragraphs. There was a small amount

of null material between sentences, and larger amounts after

three groups of sentences. So we called them paragraphs."

"Ok," I said. "Sorry for interrupting. Please go on."

"Well, the sentences talk about how intelligent species can

leave their marks in history. How some, like the human species,

have left some of their marks in stone, and these have survived.

And how these could be easily recognized by other intelligent

people -- or species.

"We're not really clear whether the word in that paragraph

is species or people.

"Then the text continues with what looks like a question:

"But what of species who lack the capacity to work in

stone, to leave their records in unchanging media? How might

they tell the future about their existence? They might try to

leave a marker, a message, in a different kind of stone, a

living stone, a medium -- a medium over which they had power.

"And the notation of life -- as the text seems to put it --

was their medium. They must've had the capacity to penetrate

our DNA, maybe re-arrange it, and leave this message.

"And the message says it will be passed on from generation

to generation, without knowledge of the bearers, and it will

therefore last longer than any message carved in non-living

stone."

I whistled.

"Wild, I know," Jenna said. "I mean, there are lots of

individual words in there that we're not completely sure what

the meaning is, but that's our best estimate as to the general

sense of it."

"So what are we talking about here? Intelligent pieces of

viruses that can penetrate our chromosomes, our DNA, and leave

messages for us? Intelligent aliens who were able to perform

genetic engineering on our ancestors, and leave their calling

card in case we had further business?"

Jenna made a helpless gesture. "That, and every

possibility in between," she said. "I don't know. I didn't say

they were viruses. I just said that was the thrust of the

message they left -- in me. I saw it. Twice." Her lips were

quivering again.

"All right," I said, and tried to give her a reassuring

smile. Though I didn't particularly feel that way. "And was

that all there was? That was the entire text on the screen?"

"That's the substance of the message," Jenna said. "There

was something more at the end -- a sort of notice I guess."

"Tell it to me," I prompted.

She closed her eyes, as if trying to get these words

exactly. Apparently she felt they in themselves posed no

threat. "Anyone who reads these words, who possesses our codes,

is free to use them. As allowed under our Copyright Notice."

"Copyright Notice?" So there it was. I was glad Jenna was

at least being honest with me.

She shrugged. "That's what the ASCII translation table

printed out in English. The newer approaches try to go for

figurative rather than literal translations where possible --

they convey the culture with more flair, though increase the

likelihood of error. The proto-Indo-European was closer to

Proclamation of Possession, or maybe Announcement of Ownership

Privileges -- I've become an expert on that damn language,

already, believe me. Truthfully, we didn't pay all that much

attention to that last part. The stuff in the body of the

message seemed much more important."

"Hard to believe that some non-human intelligence would

share our notion of copyright," I said.

"Harder to believe they could create a code that could be

rendered into something that looks anything like Indo-European,

and store it in some of our chromosomes," Jenna said. "But there

it is. And the sense of property, possession, is very old,

biologically."

"You mean like mice pissing -- urinating, sorry -- to mark

their territory?"

"Right," Jenna may have smiled, first time. "And hamsters

mark stones near their dens with secretions -- ethologists say

scent marks are chemical property signs. It's all over the

natural world. Birds, fish, even insects mark and defend their

property. And the closer we come to human beings, the more

abstract the notion of property becomes. Monkeys, baboons,

chimps have all kinds of very complex expressions of property,

aggressively excluding this or that member of the troop,

family, whatever from the privileged circle of users."

"So maybe the authors of your text were human," I said.

"Well, could be," Jenna said, "And who really knows what

people -- any species -- were really capable of seven or eight

thousand years ago."

"That's the first sign of Indo-European in human history?"

I asked.

Jenna nodded. "Nostratic supposedly goes back even further

-- more than 12,000 years -- and has some resemblance to

Indo-European, but its existence is still hotly contested.

Anyway," she took another sip of tea, with steadier hands this

time, "the chromosomal algorithms print out like Indo-European,

or something very close to it."

"How do we know the linguistic DNA wasn't inserted into the

genome more recently?" I asked.

"We don't -- not for sure," Jenna said. "But the eight

percent of X chromosomes with the odd material comes from

people all over the world, many way off the track of usual

scientific research. Doubtful that an insertion of recent

vintage could have that kind of in-depth dispersion. No, I

think we're on reasonable ground assuming that the authors of

the text, whoever or whatever they were, were contemporaries of

early Indo-European. Our problem then becomes how to account

for such early people -- if they were people -- having any sort

of gene-insertion technology. But like I was saying -- like the

message itself says -- all we really know of the distant past is

what has come down to us in obvious long-lasting media like

stone, bone, petrified wood. People in Asia probably did things

that would surprise us in bamboo, but all that's disintegrated

now. I don't find it impossible to consider that some early

human group, speakers and writers of an Indo-European root

language, found a way to manipulate DNA. Even non-literate

groups show enormous sophistication in deliberate breeding of

animals and plants. And if our Indo-European gene-authors could

do that, inserting a message that could play out on today's

computers doesn't seem impossible either -- DNA and computer

codes operate in similar ways, both prescribe patterns of

organization. Adleman's already demonstrated that DNA in a

test-tube can be used to compute solutions for mathematical

problems. And they just had to do it once -- encode their

message into DNA and attach it to the X chromosome just once --

all it required was one fluorescence of their culture. The

knowledge to do this could have come and gone all in one or two

hundred years. And after that the natural process of DNA

replication would see that the message would live on and on.

That's the beauty -- and the horror -- of it. We have in DNA

the most effective of all known replicative devices."

"Your perception is impressive, for someone--"

"For someone just a few years out of grad school? For

someone so young? Not really. This is my _life_. I guess in

more ways than one."

"I know," I said. "That's the problem with most of these

quests to understand who we are, where we were, where we're

going, isn't it? Sooner or later all the fine science boils down

to lives at stake." I closed my eyes, opened them, focused

entirely on Jenna's face. "Until we can relate what that

prehistoric Stephen Jay Gould or whoever wrote, connect that to

Glen Chaleff's body falling apart, maybe Manny Klein's too,

your life is the one at stake here in the short run. Doesn't

matter how appealing your DNA-to-Indo-European-ASCII hypothesis

is, the cops won't care. They'll come after you for Chaleff's

death. And in the long run...," I shuddered, "well, if something

in those words killed Chaleff and Klein, then who knows how many

others are at risk."

"You believe in my work, then?" Jenna asked, for an

instant more pleased to have an ally in her adventures in

knowledge than frightened about where that knowledge might be

taking her.

"Let's just say I have a very open mind." But the truth was

my mind was set -- on finding a way out for her.

"Two people are dead," Jenna said. "There has to be a

connection."

***

The Lieutenant informed me the next morning about a

connection that didn't work to Jenna's benefit at all. "Chaleff

was dipping the wick with a blonde. Going on for at least a few

weeks. Three witnesses saw Katen throw a glass of wine in his

face and scream at him about it at a party week before last.

There's the motive."

"Yeah? And how exactly did she do it? With a magic wand?"

"That's for you to find out, Doc."

I called Jenna and asked if I could come over. She lived

in a new highrise in the West Village. She obviously had money.

Her face flushed when I told her about the witnesses at the

party. "So what?" she said. "Lots of people fool around, lots

of people scream and yell at each other. Doesn't mean I killed

him, for crissakes."

"I'm more concerned that you didn't tell me," I said.

"What? You want a complete exposition of my life? You want

a calendar of every fight I had with Glen?"

"No," I said. "Look, this isn't going well for you. I

tried to tell you that yesterday. Cops are like hounds moving

in concentric circles -- once they get a sniff of the quarry,

they go round and around, tighter and tighter, until they close

in totally and arrest you. And don't believe the movies and TV

shows -- once they arrest you your chances are not very good.

You're near the pit now. You've got momentum against you.

We've got to come up with some sort of evidence of what you're

talking about, soon, or the situation may be out of my control."

"What kind of evidence?" Jenna asked. "I've already told

you what I know."

"Real evidence," I said. "Not just your rendition of the

words on the screen. I'm talking about firing up your computer,

putting a disk with a binary map of the chromosome stuff in the

drive, running the ASCII/Indo-European transformation, and

videotaping that whole process including everything on the

screen."

"And then what? Running it on HBO as America Under Cover

and killing the millions of people who watch it?"

"Well, if it came to that, I could probably get some

prisoners on some death row to volunteer to read it, but I don't

think reading it can kill anybody."

"Why not?" Jenna asked.

"Well, for starters, you obviously looked at it and you're

still alive. And I saw the words `Copyright Notice' and I'm

still in peak condition."

"That was just one phrase," Jenna said.

"Of course," I said. "But your survival and my survival

certainly suggest that whatever's going on with the text, just

reading it isn't ipso facto lethal."

"So where are you headed then? Back to proving by process

of elimination that _I_ killed Glen?"

"No, I don't think that either. All I'm saying is that

something more than just looking at a screen is the culprit

here."

"What, then?" Jenna asked.

"I have an idea," I said. "But first things first. Can

your computer handle the ASCII transformation?"

Jenna nodded.

"I assume you have some of the binary codes from your, ah,

biological system available on disk?"

She nodded again. "I already have the Indo-European

proto-language rendition of my DNA message on disk. Part of

this phase of the research was to see if more than one

programmer could come up with the same English words

independently."

"Ok. Then all that needs to be done is the final

translation into English. I brought this new little camcorder

along with me from my office -- I can set it up right there in

the corner." I slipped the three-pound wafer out of my

briefcase. "How long would it take you to get the words on the

screen?"

***

Jenna was hunched over her computer, totally enmeshed in

her work. She jabbed a key and leaned back, hands clasped

around the back of her neck. "About 7/8ths complete at this

point," she said. She had that look of total satisfied

absorption I'd seen many times in faces of researchers.

"Good. The camcorder's all set to record, the printer

looks good too." I fiddled with the paper tray one more

unnecessary time. Paper -- marvelous invention. I didn't like

the tendency of those words on the screen to fade, and I never

put one hundred percent trust in any camera. A paper printout

was just the ticket to give me a reliable permanent record of

those words.

"You're sure you want to go through with this?" Jenna

asked, her expression suddenly changed. The larger realities

apparently were still very understandably pressing her.

"I'm sure," I said.

"You know it's possible that the reason that I read it, and

haven't been harmed, is that the DNA source code is mine..."

"Possible, yes. Lots of things are possible. But I think

the key point here is that Manny and Glen did something more

than read it. I can't imagine that just _reading_ some words on

a screen could kill--"

She shook her head. "I really don't think we should go on

with this."

I could see she was working herself up--

"I mean," she continued, "even from my selfish point of

view, if you die here, with me right next to you, there'll be no

way the police won't believe that I killed you. And even if

that wasn't the case, I don't want you to die--"

"I've already taken care of that," I said. "I left an

outline of my theories about this case in my desk before I came

here today. If something should happen to me, the Lieutenant

will read that and you'll be in the clear. You've got to trust

me on this."

"I _do_ trust you," Jenna said. "I like you -- that's why

I don't want you to die. I mean--"

"No one's going to die," I said. "I'm not going to be

sitting there staring at the screen like a wide-eyed lamb when

the words come up. We'll be in the other room. The video

recorder will start automatically. The words will print out on

the laserjet. Whatever killed Glen and Manny, it surely wasn't

the meaning of the words -- you've already recited that to me --

it had to have been some kind of energy that was generated from

the computer, released somehow along with the words. I've been

saying that I don't think that just reading the words released

that energy -- I don't see how it could. But even if it did,

there's no way that energy could be carried along to a simple

printout on paper."

Jenna still looked doubtful. "What about the video tape?"

"We won't look at it directly -- I'll use the digital scan

to confirm that something was in fact recorded, then get it over

to the lab for further testing."

"I don't know," she said.

"Jenna, I'm appealing to you not only as a woman who may

need this evidence to save her own freedom, maybe even her life,

but as someone who cherishes the pursuit of knowledge. You and

your colleagues started this. Who knows what lessons this DNA

message may ultimately hold for the human species? We've got to

see this through."

She sighed, shaking her head, but she swayed back to the

computer. I could see her body, first limp and sagging, now

energized and vibrant as she returned her full attention to the

work on the screen. "We should have the text up here any minute

now," she said. "The program will beep 30 seconds before the

words all become clear on the screen, so that'll give you enough

time to get into the next room. Don't be like Lot's damn wife

-- make sure you don't turn around and peek at the screen."

The camcorder clicked and whirred into action.

The phone rang. "Should I get it?" I asked.

Jenna motioned yes.

"Hello? D'Amato. Phil. Fine, thanks. Uh huh. I see.

Jeez -- How? Ok. I understand. Of course I will. I'll be back

to you."

The computer beeped. "Words are on the screen in 30

seconds," Jenna turned and announced with a mixture of triumph

and trembling.

"That was Hertzberg on the phone," I said.

"What's he found? Anything of interest?" Jenna rose from

her chair.

"Someone else on the project died -- of `natural' causes.

Denise Richter. You know her?"

"Of course I know her," Jenna sobbed like someone stuck by a

knife. "Of course I do. I didn't know her well but -- for God's

sake, how'd it happen this time?"

"Same as the last two," I said. "At least you're off the

hook now on the murder charge."

"Oh God. I just thought of something."

"What?" I said.

"Denise was using my genetic material. Glen told me the

batch she'd been working on had been accidentally ruined -- the

stain was too strong -- so he sent her some of his stock, which

was mine... Oh god." Now not only her lips but her entire body

was quivering.

"It's ok," I said, and I put my hand on her shoulder to

calm her. "Hertzberg's putting a halt on the project. That's

why he was calling you. I guess he has the requisite number of

bodies now--"

"And I'm gonna put an end to _this_," Jenna cried out, and

I saw her hand reach down to the keyboard.

My hand shot out in reflex, faster than Jenna's. I caught

her wrist in midair, jerked it away from the keyboard. "Don't,"

I said. "We've got to go through with this."

"Are you crazy?" she screamed. "How many more dead do you

want?" And her fists were pummeling my chest, unclenching into

hands that were frantically trying to push me away, break free

so she could get to the keyboard and prevent the words from

getting on the screen, maybe erase all the crucial preparatory

work on her hard disk as well.

But I set my arms firmly around her body and moved her out

of the way. And I had a clear view of the screen.

And God help me, I couldn't stop myself.

I looked and read.

***

Jenna's voice came to me and said, "Are you ok?"

The words on the screen were as Jenna had described them in

the restaurant. Down to that peculiar copyright notice that I

had seen a fragment of in Glen Chaleff's apartment, and Jenna

had quoted verbatim to me in the restaurant.

"Anyone who reads these words, who possesses our codes, is

free to use them. As allowed under our Copyright Notice."

"Are you ok?" Jenna asked again. "How do you feel?" And I

could see she was staring at me intently.

"So far, so good," I said. "Just the usual hunger rumblings

in my stomach."

Jenna continued to stare at me, as if keeping me in the

crystal clear focus of her green violet eyes would prevent me

from dying.

"I'm ok, really," I said. "I'm sorry I had to shove you

out of the way." Actually, my body wasn't -- she'd felt very

good with my arms around her. But that was hardly the point.

"Oh God," she put her arms around me and pulled herself

close. Professional, think professional, I thought. She's still

officially a subject in a murder investigation, though I knew

she wasn't guilty. I controlled myself to the point of allowing

myself just one or two strokes of her soft brown hair. "I'm so

glad you're ok," she said, crying. "What am I? Some sort of

goddamn Typhoid Mary of an ancient genetically engineered curse?"

"No," I said. "This isn't a disease -- even though I said

virus the other day. I mean, it could be a virus, it could be

some early advanced variant of the human species, hell, it could

be aliens from outerspace like I said. The point is that

whatever, whoever rigged this booby trap, was an intelligence.

And disease isn't intelligent. Deadly sometimes, yes. But not

intelligent. And this isn't a curse either. We're dealing with

fact here, hard science, not magic -- something in your DNA.

And that's about as real a reality of life as you can get. You

know that."

"But what's the booby trap?" Jenna asked, pulling herself

away and drying her eyes. "You're still alive. Even though

Manny and Glen and now Denise..." She shook her head.

"The answer has to be in the words on the screen -- the

last two sentences if I'm right. The words of course are not

exact -- how could they be? Hertzberg says you have no way of

confirming the accuracy of the transformation. He's right in

terms of the usual modes of linguistic confirmation. They can

confirm the accuracy of the Indo-European to English part, but

not the initial chromosome-ASCII to Indo-European part. How

could they? It's never been done before. We're in a

technological variant of Plato's Meno paradox here -- you have

to already have knowledge to recognize, to validate, potential

knowledge, so where does the first knowledge come from? But the

chromosome ASCII looks like Indo-European -- not like Chinese or

Korean. So, ok, it may just coincidence, like Hertzberg

thought, but let's assume it _is_ Indo-European, or related to

it, and proceed from there. Where does that lead us? Hertzberg

says there's a high noise component. But no reason to think

it's evenly distributed throughout every word in the message.

Some of the text on the screen may be way off from its original

meaning, some may be right on the money. How do we tell which

is which? What does the evidence suggest?"

Jenna held her hands up in an I-don't-know gesture.

"Well," I continued, "we've got three fatalities now as

evidence. What part of the text could they possibly relate to?

I don't see anything in the history lesson, fascinating as it

is, that could be the culprit. But I do see a possible suspect

at the end -- in the copyright notice. `As allowed under our

Copyright Notice.' Let's assume the noise in that section of the

text is low. Let's assume that Copyright Notice, or something

close to it, is an accurate rendition. Now: Seen in that light,

maybe the deaths make sense as punishment for what's _not_

allowed under their notions of property."

"What's not allowed under copyright?" Jenna asked. She

cast a sideways look at the screen. I followed her gaze. The

words were mostly gone now.

"Let's think about what _is_ allowed, first," I said. "The

text says it's all right to `use' the words, or maybe to use

the `codes'. What does that mean? How do we use printed words?"

"We read them?" Jenna asked.

"Yes," I said. "And that seems to be ok -- at least for me.

I read the words and I'm ok. And I have no special connection

to these words. They didn't come from my chromosomes."

Jenna nodded and looked at me, still not completely

convinced that I would _be_ ok.

"All right," I said. "So let's get to the `codes'. How

would we `use' genetic codes?"

"Well, the most common way is we have sex, reproduce, and

the codes create new versions of us. And the codes within our

cells create new cells, as long as we're alive."

"Right," I said. "And that seems ok too. I mean, people

reproduce all the time, right, and few seem to die of mysterious

natural causes. Most people's cells reproduce ok too, for at

least most of their lives. For that matter, Adleman used real

DNA codes for his computations -- I pulled some summaries of his

work off the Net last night -- -- and he's all right. Though

presumably he didn't use yours."

"True," Jenna said, not in any mood for my humor. "So where

does that leave us?"

"Where it leaves us is at a clearer answer to the question

you just asked: What do those words on the screen forbid? Not

reading the instructions. Not implementing the instructions --

not implementing the genetic codes. Those things are ok. We're

`free' to do them. We can use the words and the codes. But

what is that Notice saying, in some sort of implicit way, that

we _can't_ do? What does a copyright notice seek to protect

against?"

"Plagiarism? Theft of intellectual property?" Jenna asked.

"Yes," I said, "but those wrongs seem too subtle for what's

going on here. The proscription has to be against something

much more basic -- more common. Something that Klein and

Chaleff and Richter all did, no doubt in all innocence.

Something that people do almost without thinking with computers

all the time."

Jenna held her hands up in frustration. "What?"

"Do you have a way of automatically making a copy of a file

on your computer? You know, giving the command to copy in some

sort of delayed way that would allow us to walk out of the room

while the copying was taking place -- rather than staring at the

screen, or being anywhere near it?"

"Well sure," Jenna said. "I can put the copy command at

the end of a command chain -- a long chain -- that would

definitely give us time to get out of the room. But--"

"OK, well could you do that right now then -- for the

chromosome text on the screen and its underlying program?"

"You think that making a _copy_ of this triggered

everything off?" Jenna asked, disbelievingly. "Making a copy

killed Glen and Manny -- and Denise?"

"Well, it's a copyright notice, isn't it? And making

copies is precisely what DNA is all about."

***

She entered the delayed command string in the computer, and

we walked quickly into the next room. I told her not to look

anywhere near the computer screen. We looked at the opposite

wall -- at the hand-me-down shadows of Plato's cave, like dogs

baying at the moon -- and saw nothing. No effect at all. A

brief play of light on the blue wall, like heartbeat of a

photocopy, maybe, and that was it. The paint didn't even so much

as peel.

But the camcorder, which presumably had been recording all

this time, made a sharp whining noise and flashed an erratic red

light. I turned it off manually, and did a digital scan of the

tape. "Goddamnit. That pulse or whatever it was must've erased

the whole tape. We've got nothing here."

"What now?" Jenna asked, very tiredly.

"We call in the mice," I said.

A half hour later, my friend Johnny Novino from the Berg

Institute at the NYU Medical Center -- an animal research lab --

arrived with a cartload of white mice.

"What are they for?" he asked.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you, so I won't," I

answered. "And I'd rather you didn't know anything beforehand,

so you can conduct a completely unbiased examination if need be."

"Figures," he said, gave Jenna a wink, and he left.

We set up a pair of mice in a cage in front of the screen,

and Jenna entered the delayed copy command. We hurried out of

the room, and saw the same light kiss on the wall.

But for the mice, it was the kiss of death.

We repeated the act ten times, and produced twenty dead

rodents.

"Was that really necessary?" Jenna asked.

"Yeah," I said. "I don't like this anymore than you, but

we've got to have redundancy to really pinpoint the exact cause

of death here. Better them than us."

"Poor little things couldn't even read the damn text,"

Jenna said, then rushed into the bathroom and threw up.

***

The lab report came back five days later.

"Phil, you know about circadian rhythms?" Johnny returned

my call about the report.

"Well, as much as the next guy," I said. "They control our

waking and sleeping patterns, and are governed in some way by

light. They seem to affect the brain's sleep center through the

optic nerve."

"That's right," Johnny said. "So what seems to have

happened to your little mice is some stimulus, likely some kind

of light, switched their circadian rhythm to infinite awake --

as in impossibly high blood pressure, instant heart failure,

instant everything failure, adios muchachos."

"And your evidence for that?"

"Like the report says," Johnny replied. "Incredibly high

residues of serotonin -- natural chemical found in the brain,

contributes to the sense of wide awakeness, well-being, also

raises the blood pressure."

"So at least the mice died with a smile in their hearts," I

said, and filled him in on all the details.

"Jeez," Johnny said. "Likely Glen Chaleff died of that

too, then. But your guys must've missed it because serotonin's

a natural compound, on no one's list as an abused drug. We

missed it too on the first six mice. But there's no doubt about

it now. So my best guess for the full trajectory -- assuming

you didn't administer serotonin to the mice yourself -- is

light provokes extreme circadian reaction, causing huge overdose

of serotonin, causing lethally high blood pressure, causing

heart attack and general system failure across the board. The

only real mystery here is what the hell kind of light could do

that?"

"We're working on it," I said.

***

"But how could a people eight thousand years ago know how

to make our current computers emit a fatal light?" Jenna asked

over dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant the next evening.

"I don't know," I said. "But that's no more a puzzle than

that they could insert a special binary code in some of our

chromosomes that could read out ASCII Indo-European -- and

you've been willing to believe that. We don't understand the

relationship of electricity to light in anything like its

entirety even now. Maybe they did -- or at least knew something

we don't yet. Maybe they had some kind of organic computers --

that ran on DNA algorithms like Adleman's math calculator --

except rather than solving equations they caused electrons to

form light patterns that in turn controlled circadian rhythms."

"Lots of primitive people understand circadian rhythms,"

Jenna said. "I can believe that. And the DNA computers--"

"Rotted away," I said. "Or maybe they're in us. Who

knows."

"Their media were life and light," Jenna said, "more

ephemeral, but also much more lasting, than just plain stone."

And the red wine came and we both got good and drunk...

***

Some things are too bizarre for me ever to put in a public

record -- not if I want to keep my job.

Hertzberg called an end to that small project within a

project, but Jenna's going on. She and I contacted all of the

original researchers, explaining our theories to them. Most

thought we were nuts, a few believed us. Doesn't matter if they

believe us or not -- the important thing is that those who

pursue this aren't likely to risk making a copy of the text any

time soon. We can't do anything more than alert them -- to the

enormous possibilities of this research as well as its dangers.

The rest is up to them.

The problem is we don't have any evidence. Videotapes,

motion photography -- all equipment seems to be blind to that

deadly little light, able neither to transmit nor record it.

We can make no record of what happens when Jenna's chromosome

text is copied, no record of that thin bright thread that's

emitted. Puts a crimp in any research program.

And we of course have no copies of the text. Videotapes,

photographs of the screen, endless printouts -- they all come

out blank too, as innocent of DNA and Indo-European as the

driven snow. The lethal light hadn't erased the video-recording

that first time; the recording hadn't occurred to begin with.

"What kind of words can appear on a computer screen and

defy recording, printing, on any other piece of equipment?"

Jenna had asked.

"Maybe the kind that kills you if you try to copy them,"

I'd replied. "Maybe the words don't really exist on the screen

at all. Maybe the program somehow projects them right onto our

optic nerve."

But the corpses existed all right. Three good people, and

a pile of who knows how many rodents now. They, ironically,

were the sole proof that the ASCII derived from the DNA not only

looked like Indo-European, but was Indo-European or something

much like it -- stark confirmation that at least some of those

words meant what they said. Jenna thinks that might be enough to

give us a shot of getting something published, maybe in one of

the fringier scientific journals.

We -- Jenna -- stumbled upon something, yes. A primordial

copy protection scheme. A copy protection technique from Hell.

DNA as ultimate shareware: _use_ this little program to your

heart's content, enjoy it, be fruitful and multiply with it,

implement it -- let it implement you -- but don't copy the words

without authorization. Not unlike many of our own computer

programs -- and books -- really. Except authorization to copy

the Indo-European DNA text has likely been quite impossible to

get for something going on eight thousand years or more.

I guess I was able to see this when Jenna didn't because,

well, my job is always at the intersection of science and the

law, of life and property and the canons for its protection.

And this canon was effective, I'll give at least that to its

authors.

Who were they? They apparently left their message in in

the far reaches of some eight percent of human X chromosomes,

their precious copyright notice in who knows what fraction of

those. Maybe they were in some way responsible for setting the

human species on the course it took.

Why would they attach such a deadly penalty to a violation

of their notice? In that they were no different than organisms

throughout the animal kingdom ready to protect their turf by

deadly force. Jeez, didn't I read just last week that even some

trees emit a resin that kills any insects that trod too heavily

on their bark.

Only further research will tell. And that, obviously,

Jenna and her colleagues will have to be do exceedingly

carefully. Like they were researching a deadly new virus.

In the meantime, we'll just have to take what pleasures

with our DNA we more or less safely can. Those we are "free" to

enjoy...

I ran my hand against the skin of Jenna's back. She lay

sleeping on my chest. She'd been cleared of all charges --

Denise's death had seen to that -- she was no longer a suspect

in any way.

I often wondered if somehow hers was the only one of the

eight percent of the X chromosomes that not only had the binary

DNA material, but the DNA that yielded that brief meditation on

modes of preservation, along with the copyright notice. Not

likely, I guess. Further research would answer that question

too.

But in the meantime, the sensible course would be to assume

that Jenna was the only one. She was the only one we knew

about. And if that was so, then my responsibility to the human

genome, the human species, was to see that Jenna's special DNA

survived. Not only in frozen storage, which Jenna had already

taken care of, but in actual in situ living usage -- the far

more reliable and time-honored way of getting DNA into the

future.

I of course knew, in spite of what I had told her that day

in her apartment when we'd first glimpsed the light, that what

she carried in her DNA was indeed both a blessing and a curse --

a blessing in terms of the knowledge about our very origins that

it could hold, a curse in terms of the price that three

unknowing people had already paid in quest for that wisdom. A

mechanism of beauty and horror, as Jenna had said herself. But

to the degree that it was a blessing, I had to help it survive.

Yes, until further research could sort all of this out, I

was willing to do my part to insure that the text she carried

was passed on to future generations in its original form, where

minds wiser than ours might come to better understand it, plumb

it for its secrets, and neutralize its deadly penalties.

After all, the lethal qualities of the DNA she carried

didn't extend to reproduction. That, the copyright notice said,

she was free to do.

I was prepared to help her do just that.

I moved my head over and kissed her face.

After all, I was a forensic scientist, but a scientist

first, and though I'd pretty much reached the limits of my

capacity to contribute to the ongoing research here, that didn't

mean that I'd shirk my responsibility to help the subject of the

research live on.

That, and I so enjoyed looking into Jenna's green violet

eyes when they were happy...

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